Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We are live and in person in New York City. So I'm excited to have my old pal, a Democratic strategist, advisor to the bench and majority Dems, author of Any Given Tuesday, A Political Love Story. And we are here in kind of a mommy blogger studio. So I have a mommy. It's Liz Smith. How are you doing?
I'm good. Thank you. It's good to see you again.
How's your mom?
My mom is great. She's great. She's recovering from a broken pelvis, but nothing can keep her down.
Does she miss me?
Of course she misses you. I didn't tell her that I was going on your show today. This is going to be the highlight of her week.
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Chapter 2: How does the Trump administration accuse critics of being foreign agents?
Ayatollah Khamenei, number two, the maybe gay one, is just like, Mr. Trump, whatever you want. We're opening the strait tomorrow. We'll give you the dust. Even then, it's like, was it worth it? Was it worth pissing off our allies? Was it worth all the munitions we've lost? The cost of this war? We're going to have to rebuild our military? The cost to consumers of gas?
I don't even know what a win looks like.
Yeah, and that's the problem is the cost. And thinking about all of that money that could have been spent here at home. And that was a big thing Trump talked about in 2024 is, why are we spending all this money in Ukraine when we could be spending it here at home? But he's doing that in Iran. And this Iran stuff makes a lot less sense than intervening with Ukraine.
And then the other thing that's even more troubling is when you see now that because of all the block industry of Hormuz, Gas prices are not going to go down for a very, very long time. It's not like they come to a deal and gas prices immediately drop. So gas prices are going to remain high through the election. I do not see them getting a win before November.
And the biggest losers of all this are going to be consumers. It's going to be the voters who went to the polls in 2024 and said, I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden because he's costs are too high and he doesn't give a shit about inflation. And Donald Trump very clearly gives even less of a shit about inflation than Joe Biden does.
All right. So just because I'm enjoying the administration threatening me doesn't make it good for the administration to threaten people. So I did want to mention one other story that's happened this week that I find pretty sick. Somebody else that seems like they're actually being targeted by the administration, not just by tweets, is E. Jean Carroll.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of Trump's foreign dealings?
CNN reported that DOJ opened a criminal perjury investigation into her testimony. during her deposition about how her lawsuit was funded. No one's confirmed that recording, but there's also some other related investigations. Trump's trying to get immunity from having to pay her the $83.3 million. This is insane that he's going after her, to the extent that they even are looking into it.
It's so disgusting to think that E. Jean was victimized by Trump. They took it to a jury of their peers. There was a result. And now he becomes the president and he's trying to victimize her again. I don't know. What's your perspective on this? Because to me it's just like... is this what we want the fucking DOJ doing? Does anybody want this?
Does anybody feel like this is justice or makes anybody feel safer or anything? It makes me fucking pissed on her behalf.
It makes me pissed. And no, I don't think anyone wants this. I don't think anyone asked for this. And there is always that fear. If Donald Trump can do this against his enemies, Democrats could go in and do it against theirs.
Does that sound kind of good to you now? Are you thinking, are you changing your mood on whether the Democrats should do more vengeful things?
I think Democrats should hold people accountable. But I'm not for just like, you know, blood, thirst, vengeance. At least not, you know, politically.
In your personal life.
Yes, all for it. But the other thing is like... doesn't the DOJ have bigger fish to fry? Like, you know, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, all of these things. And instead of focusing on these big problems, we're focused on E. Jean Carroll, who had a legitimate claim that Trump had sexually assaulted her years ago. And I think it's frightening to people. I think it's really petty. And
This is not what he was elected on. And this is not what people care about. And this is not making anyone's lives better.
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Chapter 4: How do Democrats plan to address corruption before 2027?
I asked Maria out. I was wearing fake glasses at the time. I was going through some stuff. I was still a Republican. I've really kind of self-actualized since then. There was a period of time where I looked back on that with a lot of embarrassment. But now that we sit here in this
soft focus studio, I can say, I look back on that now and think, man, maybe I needed that embarrassing moment with Maria Camilla to fully come out the other side and blossom and be my true self.
So you went from being a closeted Republican, fake glasses wearing operative to a never Trumper to a Democrat and now to an agent of the Iranian government.
Allegedly, falsely allegedly.
Wow. That is like some Madonna-like reinvention.
It's been a journey. It's been a journey. Where were we?
Why were we talking about 2006? Sorry, 2006. You know, your personal story always gets me. So I was with Claire McCaskill in 2006 on her Senate race. And if you remember that year, that was when all of these GOP corruption scandals came to a head with the lobbyists and pay to play stuff with Mark Foley and the cover up with him, you know, doing all this inappropriate stuff with underage pages.
And it was a mixture of like bad sex stuff and sort of pay to play stuff, a mixture of self-enrichment. And we Democrats effectively use that to say that there was a Irredeemable culture of corruption in the Republican Party. We needed to drain the swamp, clean house.
And we had candidates who could prosecute the case effectively, like someone like Claire McCaskill, state auditor who rooted out waste. Jim Webb in Virginia, like this just amazing, you know, war hero. I think we're really ripe for a moment like that now. The corruption is so much worse, so much more brazen. Last night I was reading through all the Trump stuff. It is crazy.
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Chapter 5: What challenges are faced by candidates in the Texas Senate race?
But we need to figure that out and figure that out fast. Who is going everywhere? Ro Khanna, you mentioned, has done a good job of going to many places. But yeah, let's deputize more people.
Now, Rose has been on Fox, and things are different. I had the team because, you know, do you feel like you get credit for, like, coining the go-everywhere strategy? Is that Liz Smith TM?
I think some people have given me credit for it, yeah.
I give you credit for it. So I had an idea for a gimmick, which was I was going to put on Dems on Fox recently, and we were going to grade them, like, who's doing well. You know, we're going to grade on the Pete scale, like, you know, where Pete is the best, and, you know, I don't know who would be the worst in that trajectory. But for this week... Only one Democrat has been on Fox.
It was Chris Coons, and he got asked about Jill Biden's book. And I wish Jill Biden would just go away. God love her, just hang out in Delaware. We don't need the book. This is not a book anybody wants or needs. So it wasn't that great of a hit. You know, you weren't really on offense when you're talking about the Biden 2024 debate. And Coons did the best he could.
He kind of pivots back to his message points. It's like, okay. So what is happening there? Are not enough Dems trying to go on? Do you think Fox realizes things are bad and they're not having people on? It feels like the effort on the go everywhere is not really as intense as I would like in this moment.
So there are two reasons these days to go on Fox. One is to have a moment, right, where you just go on and you're like, I want to punch the host in the face.
Right.
That's a very self-serving thing where you will get donors out of it. The chattering class will be like, oh, look, this guy or gal can take the fight to the Republicans. You will get plaudits online. But when you take that approach, you are absolutely not winning anyone at home. And I've just seen – over time, people more and more doing that approach versus the persuasion approach.
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Chapter 6: How do cultural issues impact Democratic strategies?
I'm not a fancy pen guy. But yeah.
And then there's that thing where he let off the hook this guy who admitted to repeatedly raping a boy from the age of like 8, 9, 10.
He got like 30 days. 30 days. Because they were friends or had a relationship of some kind.
Right. And so, I mean, that's like Mark Foley on steroids. It's Epstein. It fits into all of this whole class, and it's disgusting. It's sick.
He hasn't debated since 2014, speaking of the P word again. Paxton doesn't debate.
Doesn't debate.
So I think a lot of opportunities for him to go on offense.
Like, look, if they're going to go this way about Tallarico, let's just go there with Paxton. That guy does not have a face for TV.
No.
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Chapter 7: What are the lessons learned from past elections for Democrats?
And everyone I know in Maine, like I'm talking about people who like worked for Hillary Clinton. Like not, I'm not talking about like lefties, all that. They go wild for him because they've seen him up close. And the nice thing about a state like Maine is you can actually see and touch a lot of people up close. Harder to do that in Texas.
Trying to force mills was such a mistake.
Oh, yeah.
It was such a mistake by Schumer.
It was like looking at 2024 and saying, okay, let's double down on all the dumb shit we did there. Someone old, someone who is the definition of the establishment. I don't understand why they expected a different result.
Let's pick on the populist lefties for one sec. Okay. Okay. Here's my main issue. Like, in this moment right now, I feel like in the conventional wisdom, in the narrative online, everybody now says, like, what the Democrats need to do to win is... populist, Bernie-style economics, you know, people in the Graham Platner mold. Like, that's how you win over swing voters.
And we're going to do that instead of moving to the middle, you know, on cultural issues or whatever, the things that people suggested in the past that you do to win over swing voters. And I'm like... I'm open to trying it. I'm actually not – it's not my cup of tea personally, but that could be right. My issue with it is they're very dismissive of any other possible model for winning voters.
And their model hasn't actually worked yet. It's true the Kamala model didn't work. We saw that. That's true. I don't think anybody – is suggesting we run the Harris campaign, except maybe her.
I mean, what even was the Kamala model, though?
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Chapter 8: How does parenting relate to political discussions in this episode?
I remember him on those debate stages in 2020. This is not – this is a guy who's – Not a dynamic character. Yeah, not a dynamic character, but someone who's completely flipped his positions on everything else. But then like – He has to buy all these people to support him. And all the people he's buying off to support him are the people who rail against the billionaires. So find all of that.
It's a bit hollow. Bit hollow.
So you're part of the Katie Porter hive then? You know what? The new Kay hive?
I am. I'm a New York resident. I do some work in California. Adam Schiff and, you know, Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is, I think.
Oh, we love Mayor Daniel Lurie. Okay. Stop promoting all your candidates. I want to get you some credit.
I'm just promoting. For the people that are mad at you. Come back to Blue City. We love Daniel Lurie.
Yeah.
For people who may be getting mad at some of your takes there on the left, you also are kind of a surprise Zoran stan.
I was.
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